The Pembury Tavern in London: Now Accepting Bitcoin Will Schmidt Jun 26, 2013 Tweet Stephen Early, a Cambridge University computer scientist-turned-pub owner, decided to accept Bitcoin as a viable currency at The Pembury Tavern in Hackney, east London. Early’s sister bars in Cambridge, Norwich, and Peterborough are also on board. After buying a few Bitcoins back in 2011, Early put them in a digital drawer, so to speak, and ignored them. The value of Bitcoin started climbing shortly thereafter, and Early decided people might want to spend their own crypto currencies on something useful: pints. The Pembury Tavern got a quick upgrade and had 1,000 lines of code added to the electronic point-of-sale system Early had already designed for the pub. The new code allows customers to open their digital wallets, scan a custom-generated QR code, and have their payment confirmed. After...